Authentication is the process
of verifying that a specific person sent a message. This can be
accomplished with secret or public key encryption systems.

A secret key system can verify that
one of the individuals who know the secret key sent the message, although
it cannot necessarily identify which one of those individuals sent the
message.

With an asymmetric key system and
a digital signature, you know that only the people possessing the key
used to create the signature could have sent the message. Since digital
signatures are usually created with the senders private key, this
tells you that that person was the sender of the message.

Authentication is

Authentication is the process of verifying that a specific person sent a message.

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